cog

Etymology 1

From Middle English cogge, from Old Norse [Term?] (compare Norwegian kugg (“cog”), Swedish kugg, kugge (“cog, tooth”)), from Proto-Germanic *kuggō (compare Dutch kogge (“cogboat”), German Kock), from Proto-Indo-European *gugā (“hump, ball”) (compare Lithuanian gugà (“pommel, hump, hill”)), from *gēw- (“to bend, arch”). The meaning of “cog” in carpentry derives from association with a tooth on a cogwheel.

noun

1. A tooth on a gear.
2. A gear; a cogwheel.
3. An unimportant individual in a greater system.
   1976, Norman Denny (English translation), Victor Hugo (original French), Les Misérables ‘There are twenty-five of us, but they don’t reckon I’m worth anything. I’m just a cog in the machine.’
   1988, David Mamet, Speed-the-Plow Your boss tells you “take initiative,” you best guess right—and you do, then you get no credit. Day-in, … smiling, smiling, just a cog.
4. (carpentry) A projection or tenon at the end of a beam designed to fit into a matching opening of another piece of wood to form a joint.
5. (mining) One of the rough pillars of stone or coal left to support the roof of a mine.

verb

1. To furnish with a cog or cogs.
2. (intransitive) Of an electric motor or generator, to snap preferentially to certain positions when not energized.

Etymology 2

From Middle English cogge, from Middle Dutch kogge, cogghe (modern kogge), from Proto-Germanic *kuggō (compare German Kock (“cogboat”), Norwegian kugg (“cog (gear tooth)”)), from Proto-Indo-European *gugā (“hump, ball”) (compare Lithuanian gugà (“pommel, hump, hill”)), from *gēw- (“to bend, arch”). See etymology 1 above.

noun

1. (historical) A clinker-built, flat-bottomed, square-rigged mediaeval ship of burden, or war with a round, bulky hull and a single mast, typically 15 to 25 meters in length.
   The name of the ship was Dawn Treader. She was only a little bit of a thing compared with one of our ships, or even with the cogs, dromonds, carracks and galleons which Narnia had owned when Lucy and Edmund had reigned there under Peter as the High King, for nearly all navigation had died out in the reigns of Caspian's ancestors. 1952, C. S. Lewis, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader
2. (by extension) A small fishing boat.

Etymology 3

Uncertain. Both verb and noun appear first in 1532.

noun

1. A trick or deception; a falsehood.
   False suggestions, shamelesse cogs, and impious forgeries. 1602, William Watson, Quodlibets Religious and State

verb

1. To load (a die) so that it can be used to cheat.
2. To cheat; to play or gamble fraudulently.
   1726, Jonathan Swift (debated), Molly Mog For guineas in other men's breeches, / Your gamesters will palm and will cog.
3. To seduce, or draw away, by adulation, artifice, or falsehood; to wheedle; to cozen; to cheat.
4. To plagiarize.
   […] his themes and exercises were in constant demand for what we called cogging and American students rather grandly called plagiarization. Shakespeare and Eliot plagiarized; we grimly cogged in the early morning-oh, […] 1979, Tri-Quarterly, numbers 46-47, page 273
   Coming to journalism, how many of us have not been guilty at some stage of 'cogging' from other articles, […] 2006, Verve: The Spirit of Today's Woman, volume 14, numbers 4-6, page 51
   I wasn't able to translate two verses in Virgil or Homer , without “ cogging " from some fellow - student ; but I was eternally repeating passages from the poems of Byron , Moore , and Scott ; while I gloried in the soul - stirring ... 1879, Dennis O'Sullivan, The Stirring Adventures of Corp'l Morgan Rattler, F. Tousey, →OCLC, page 8
5. To obtrude or thrust in, by falsehood or deception; to palm off.
   to cog in a word
   October 3, 1718, John Dennis, letter to S. T. , Esq; On the Deceitfulness of Rumour Fustian tragedies […] have […] been cogg'd upon the town for Master-pieces.

Etymology 4

noun

1. Alternative form of cogue (“wooden vessel for milk”)